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Infrastructural Blunders

There are many structures in our
country, which, perhaps, were erected only to please some architect’s brain
shitt, to fill some politician’s already flooded pocket, or to show a fake
superiority. There was no foresightedness, and for this the citizens need to
suffer.

A place like Bangalore which has
always been ridiculed for its lack of infrastructure, cannot afford such
infrastructural blunders. But there are two structures in the city, which
instead of the reducing, has increased the burden of its citizen. These
structures are such blunders that I wonder what was going through the minds of the
designers, architects, town planners, approvers, financiers and many others who
were involved in finalising the project for construction. Were they just
experimenting as to how the structure would look like, instead of planning as
to how the structure will support the growing population of the city?

K R Puram Hanging Bridge:

Sourced from Internet

It was inaugurated in 2003 by
then PM Mr. Vajpayee. It is on the Old Madras Road, serves the purpose of
Railway Crossing with K R Puram Railway Station and Ring Road crossing under
it. Must say a brilliant architecture, it was declared Most Outstanding National Bridge by the Indian Institution of
Bridge Engineers. Doesn’t it feel nice, if architectures of your city are
admired? No, in this case it doesn’t.

Source - Google Earth

I
am not sure why a flyover, which is just a railway crossing, needs such a big
structure. The bridge today is a bottleneck. It has consumed so much of space
on either side that for regular commuters on the ring road and those going
towards Whitefield, it’s a perennial headache. With the railway line passing
under the bridge, the road becomes very narrow and adding to the woes of the
commuters there is a bus stop right under the bridge. It is difficult to drive
your vehicle, and it is further more difficult for the people walking towards
the KR Puram Station to cross the road. You cannot even construct a footbridge
because of the large structure going right above your head. That is not all, I
am sure the second phase of metro, which is planned on the same route will also
face multiple issues in terms of availability of space and huge add up to the cost.
It will add to the problems of the commuters as well when the metro work will
start. This is not all, even for the commuters on the Old Madras Road who take
the bridge, there is no respite either, the approach to this bridge becomes so
congested that the vehicles crawl.

Within
10 years of its opening, the purpose of the bridge has failed big time. The
problem is big and going forward the situation is going to deteriorate. The authorities
are certainly aware of this but, I assume, even they cannot do anything,
because there is no place for them to play with.

Richmond Circle Flyover:

Source - Google Earth

Another example of a bad
planning. Can you believe, a flyover, which is normally constructed to make
roads signal free was housing a signal itself a few years back? After a lot of
planning and once the Airport was shifted, the signal was removed, but still
those coming from Lifestyle direction on Richmond Road and going towards Double
Road, they try to avoid the flyover, because of both way traffic towards the Double
Road the flyover becomes very narrow. To add to this the flyover has not
reduced the traffic congestion underneath as well.

In a country where resources are
very limited, are we in a position to experiment with such huge investments and
more than that with our own reputation? Furthermore, a poor town planning is
certainly a big dent to the reputation of the country in front of international
visitors.

Shouldn’t we question the
Government about the planning they did while approving these projects? The
Government is answerable to every penny they misuse.

Do share your views and highlight
any other structure, which you think was poorly or, perhaps, not planned at
all.

Really....Now that I read it... a whole new world opened to me...Now I am going to take a notice at all architectural structures to find out such flaws...oh here it is - my first one - the irrationally big railway stations for Chennai Metro Rail which has extremely low occupancy rate. Each one of them is wasting enough space to fit in a whole apartment building!!! Had they thought about it... there was a possibility of lower rents!!Oh! nice article by the way! Got a little carried away! :(